The problem presented in this dissertation was to describe and investigate open and traditional classrooms and their effect on black, urban, middle school students' attitudes, creativity, and achievement. Research suggested that specific areas that needed examination were students' attitudes toward school, basic skills, creativity, and self-concept. The importance of this study lies in the descriptive data, derived from the Classroom Descriptor, a locally constructed instrument, which indicated that within one year distinct differences between open and traditional classrooms can be discerned. The null hypothesis was that there would be no significant differences between open and traditional classrooms on basic skills achievement. This hypothesis was accepted. However, an examination of the mean scores of the basic skills sub-tests revealed that open classroom means were slightly higher than the traditional classrooms with one exception, arithmetic. Multivariate analysis of variance was computed comparing the open and traditional groups on the creativity and attitude measures as a set. Results indicated that open and traditional classrooms did not differ significantly in these areas, and the null hypothesis that there would be no significant difference between students in open classrooms and students in traditional classrooms on the attitude and creativity measures was accepted. (Author/AM)